Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Movies: The Year 2014 - A View Into The Rear-View Mirror

(Drivebycuriosity) - 2014 was a solid movie year. Like the years before it delivered at least one spectacular cinema event: Under The Skin. This is the most electrifying film I have seen for a while. Director Jonathan Glazer focuses on Scarlett Johansson as a sexually predatory alien camouflaged by a human skin. The camera follows "her" closely and shows how the alien tries to learn and to handle the humans. This leads to visually stunning allegories which leave room for the imagination. Watching Scarlett alluring her "prey" is breathtaking. The movie is almost a one-woman show - and highly erotical. The outstanding cinematography created pictures that are burning into the brain. Some scenes could make you fall in love with the Scottish landscape, others create surrealistic and intoxicating optical effects even Stanley Kubrick would be proud off.

It seems 2014 was the year of Scarlett Johansson, who also shone in "Lucy" where she plays a woman who gets infected by a super drug which increases her
brain function capacity ten-times. She transforms into a kind of
goddess which telekinetic power, ability to travel over time and space
and much more. It`s a lot of fun watching her fighting the Asian drug lord
and his gang who had caused this transformation.

Scarlett was also the voice of the AI - a computer program which is learning,
adapting and able to communicate and to understand its environment - in the movie "Her", who had a relationship with a man. The idea seemed a bit pathetic to me, but otherwise there were some interesting ideas about technological advances in the new future. The busy actress also made supposedly a lot of money in a blockbuster for the market of young adults (the average US movie visitors) : "Captain American: The Winter Soldier". Besides that she had another independent movie, "Chef", which I also missed.

Tilda Swinton had also a strong year. The actress impersonated a
vampire very realisticly in Only Lovers Left Alive, one of the
best movies of the year and the vampire genre. Her natural paleness, her androgenous style and her restrained
way of acting made her to the most convincing exemplar of the
bloodsuckers I have ever seen on screen. The film tells about a
married couple, both
centuries old vampires, who strolls through the nightly suburban Detroit and Tangiers
(Morocco). Their "life" gets more
and more complicated and challenged.

Swinton also delivered a brilliant performance in "Snowpiercer", where she acted as a representative of the arrogant upper class. After a failed climate experiment the whole earth is an uninhabitable
ice desert. The surviving rest of humans lives in a super-train, the
"Snowpiercer", which runs around the whole globe over a year´s time. The
train, which is very long and has many different segments, is comparable
to a spaceship but it also can be understood as an allegory to planet
earth. I was fascinated by the cinematopgraphy which showed a stunning artic world.

Tilda also appeared in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" in a supporting role. The film is set in a mountainside hotel in a fictional European state in the 1930s. Director Wes Anderson, one of the stars on the firmament of independet cinema, delivered a kaleidoscope of funny and sometimes dramatical events and spiced this with a lot of slap stick.

I also enjoyed to see Eva Green in "Sin City - A Dame to Kill For" - a surreal trip through a sinister but sexy dream world. The former Bond Girl was even more bitchy and seductive then in "Casino
Royale" and "The Dreamers". Watching Jessica Alba dancing in the club
was also breathtaking. And there were more eye cookies including Jaime
King, Rosario Dawson & Juno Temple. And Lady Gaga had an interesting
cameo.

Female Pleasures

Lars von Trier, who is one the most provocative movie directors of our times, had a memorable comeback as well. In 2011 he delivered "Melancholia", one of the best movies of the decade. Last year`s Nymphomaniac I and II wasn`t quite as strong but Charlotte Gainsbourg impressed by telling the story of her life and her addiction to sex and the intercourse with a lot of men. The film is a rich analytical discourse and offers a lot of
philosophy - about pleasure and female sexuality of course, but also
about coming of age, life in general, the compositions of Johann
Sebastian Bach, the importance of Fibonacci Numbers and much more. The
movie has in both parts a lot of graphic sex scenes but it is also
intellectual, very fresh, powerful,
thrilling and sometimes humorous.

The greatest positive surprise of the year was the Scandinavian movie Force Majeure, which ran with English subtitles. A marriage suddenly falls into a crisis caused by an unforeseen
incident. The film is a cinematic masterpiece about relationships,
spiced with philosophy, humor and surprises. I enjoyed the perfect
structure between casual family live, sudden dramatic and funny scenes.
The spellbinding cinematography delivered stunning pictures from the
awesome mountain landscape of the French Alps. It is a shame that the Oscar committee overlooked it.

The year had more positive surprises. On of them was Tim`s Vermeer, a gorgeous documentary about a Texan engineer, software
developer and
inventor who painted an exact copy of Vermeer´s "The Music Lesson". He used a
self-constructed camera obscura and a mirror in order to prove
the thesis, that the Dutch master, who lived in the 16th century,
worked with a camera obscura, a precursor of a movie projector, to
create his stunning effects. I was impressed how stubbornly methodical
and painstakingly the Texan
realized his obsession and enjoyed the beauty of Vermeer´s
paintings which fanned my appetite to see more of his work.

Some of the blockbusters also appealed. I had much fun with the dark comedy"Gone Girl" where a man is questioned by the cops because
his wife had disappeared. It´s a roller coaster of
feints & surprises and
dealt with various topics like romantics,
adultery, deception, obsession and how they made fun of cable TV and the
phenomena of mass hysteria. Maybe "Gone Girl" is a critical study about
today´s society spiced with a sharp dialogue. Here one quote: Husband: "You fucking cunt!" Wife: "I'm the cunt you married! The only
time you liked yourself was when you were trying to be someone this cunt
might like. I'm not a quitter... I'm that cunt." The
fast paced "Nightcrawler" confronts the audience with Louis (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is starting a career as a freelance video
reporter on the streets of Los Angeles and does anything to get exciting
video material (footage) to sell it to the TV channels, what leads to
dramatic developments. The film is a mirror of the contemporary media mixed with
thrilling elements - and an intense experience and
breath taking.

"Interstellar" gave me mixed feelings. Basically I enjoyed the play with the idea of wormholes as short cuts between different parts
of the universe and other science fiction topics. I indulged into the awesome pictures of
space, the earth and other planets & fascinating images of space
ships, extraterrestrial worlds and wormholes. Otherwise I disliked the illogical and kitchy plot which catered the mass market and an audience who doesn`t
care much about science and science fiction.

Pure Cinema Magic

I also had mixed feeling with "Inherent Vice", which
is an complicated and ambitious work of cinematic art (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson). I didn`t care much about the absurd and chaotic plot but I enjoyed
the eclectic roller coaster of hilarious,
sometimes funny and sometimes
dramatic scenes and ideas which werespiced with a lot of jokes and slapstick. And one of the
hottest sex scenes of independent cinema also compensated for the
challenges of the plot. Birdman gained its strength from the performances of Michael Keaton, Edward Norton & the enticing Emma Stone. I indulged in his awesome very long camera drives. The
camera followed the actors almost wherever they went and sometimes
circled around them, sucking the audience into the plot, almost
intoxicating the viewers - pure cinema magic.The film is a proof that Hollywood didn`t lose interest in making entertaining but respectable movies.

"Life of Crime" makes fun of kidnapping . A group a thugs abduct the wife of a seemingly wealthy man, which leads to a chain of surprising and hilarious events. Fun to watch. "The Trip To Italy"follows the Britsh comedians Steve Coogan & Rob Brydon on a travel to Italy where their characters are reviewing 6 top restaurants
for a newspaper. Most time the camera focuses on their faces and follows
their dialogues
and sketches. I enjoyed their laconic but humorous comments about the
world around us and had the most laughs when they were imitating the
voices and speaking in the manors of some Hollywood stars. I loved the
gorgeous landscapes (mostly at the Italian Rivera coast). Some
places justify even the cliché of "heaven on earth". And the served
meals at the classy restaurants looked "mouth-watering".

2014 proved that Hollywood still delivers good cinema besides the flood of sequels and adaptions of video games & comic books.